Time and Relative Dimension in Space
by anaer
Summary: Dick and Wally attempt to build a time machine...much to Batman's eternal consternation. Two-shot.


For a prompt over at the meme.

**Time and Relative Dimension in Space**

Batman rued the day Barry Allen had first introduced his nephew to Doctor Who. Such a small little thing had seemed perfectly innocuous at first, even as it distracted Kid Flash from missions, and then began to distract Dick from missions, and then began to be the only noise ever playing from the living room with the nicest TV at Wayne manor. And it _was_ completely innocuous, if a tad annoying.

It was completely innocuous until the day, lazing around the manor and continuing to watch their new favourite show, Wally turned to Dick and said, "Dude. _Dude_. We should totally build a TARDIS." That really should have been a sign of things to come, but Batman had stepped out of the manor at the moment. And by the time he returned to watch the video, he felt that the belief he had in his son was completely justified with the way Robin laughed at that.

"Get real, KF. We can't build a _time_ _machine_." And that would have been the end of that, but Wally West was infinitely smarter than most people in the world gave him credit for and presented the most cunning argument ever.

"Two words: _Cosmic_. _Treadmill_." Dick looked contemplative, and he sat up to ponder the possibilities. But then he shook his head.

"No way! That's _totally_ been done before. Besides, if we're going to build a TARDIS, we need to build one that _doesn't_ run on superspeed. And, as much as it pains me to say it, neither of us knows how to build a time machine."

Still, the redheaded speedster would not be deterred. He sat up as well, slinging an arm around his younger friend's shoulders, and grinned wide. "Rob. When has not knowing ever stopped us? I mean, c'mon. Look at me. Me. The guy who perfectly replicated a dangerous experiment to give myself superspeed when I was twelve. _And_ who's the one who knows how to make an EMP out of things we happen to have lying around the cave? And then there's _you_. Mr. Techno-Guru deluxe. You _hacked the motion sensors_." Which, apparently, meant entirely more to Wally than it did to Dick. "I'm pretty sure you could download the specs for the treadmill in, like, two seconds flat. We could work from there!"

"Yeah!" Robin replied with a grin equally as manic as the one on his face. "That could work!" If Bruce had happened to be in the room at that moment, he might have been able to stop what was coming early on. As it was, by the time he watched the security tapes of that afternoon, he was much too distracted to realize the impending doom two super-intelligent teenage boys who moonlighted as superheroes plotting to build a time machine could bring.

And to think, the bat-themed hero had been glad that such a project would keep Dick and Wally out of his hair for a while. Little did he know…

**xxx**

"So, Robin and Wally are attempting to build a time machine," Barry announced to all the mentors one day. He, Batman, Green Arrow, and Aquaman were gathered in Star City for their bimonthly 'Our Sidekicks are Driving Us Insane' picnic (also known as O-SAD-U-I, according to Hal Jordan. Only Ollie and Barry understood that one, and they weren't sharing with the rest of the group, leading Bruce and Arthur to think it was probably something stupid and meaningless, anyway. They were mostly right).

Lunch had been provided by Roy, who had been coerced into it by Ollie and the almighty power of the, "Because I say so." The unfortunate arrow sidekick was also a tad grumpy because he was being forced to, in his words, "babysit the brats." Kaldur, who had been there for the tantrum the redhead had thrown, had taken offense to the implication that he needed to be babysat (he most likely would have taken offense to the term brat being used as well, but seeing as he was still fairly new to the surface world, there were some things the fourteen-year-old Atlantean just hadn't learned yet). Roy, though, wasn't in any way relieved when he found out Robin had been left in Gotham.

"Yes, I know," Bruce responded flatly. Barry ignored him and continued.

"I walked in on them the other day, see. They were in the living room and had built this whole fort of pillows, and then I hear Wally saying, 'It needs to be bigger on the inside!'. So I think maybe introducing my nephew to Doctor Who was possibly not the best course of action to take. But at least he's busy staying out of trouble and not coming up with any insane experiments that could possibly kill him again."

"Always a bonus," Ollie nodded firmly. "But then, your nephew's whole problem is that he's a giant fanboy. Yours, too, come to think of it." Barry stuck his tongue out at Ollie, who returned the favour, and Batman mentally sighed and wondered why he worked with these people. "And then Robin's just a twelve year old who thinks that Kid Flash is the greatest thing since sliced bread—"

"…Sliced bread?" Arthur interjected, and Barry stifled a laugh as Bruce stifled the urge to smack himself in the face.

"—and generally will go along with whatever harebrained schemes Wally comes up with. But at least that's all _you_ have to deal with. I mean, guys…I think Roy's having sex." The laugh from Barry was in no way stifled this time.

"…And?" Arthur asked. "I mean, he's sixteen. It's not like he isn't an adult."

Ollie's face turned an interesting shade of—well, Bruce wasn't entirely too sure what that colour was, actually. "No. _No_! He is absolutely, avidly _not_ an adult, no matter what he likes to think!"

"Well, look on the bright side," Bruce finally added. The other three men stopped and looked at him. "At least he's not trying to build a time machine."

**xxx**

Wally stared at Robin. Robin stared back. They both stared at each other, green eyes and blue, both frowning.

"…We need a police box," Rob said suddenly.

"Yeah, but Uncle B said I'm not allowed to run to England, especially if I take you out of the country with me," Wally replied. They were standing on a street corner next to their latest attempt. The phone box was a little worse for the wear, but they had discovered the hard way that rebuilding the see-through box the way they wanted to was not quite working out how they had hoped.

"Back to the drawing board?"

"Oh, definitely."

Wally grabbed Dick, and the next second they were back at the pillow fort in Iris and Barry's living room (so far, they had not been able to make the fort bigger on the inside, but Wally had 'borrowed' a couple more books from several prestigious universities around the world on string theory and quantum physics and hoped the breakthrough would be soon. As for rigging the actual machine, Dick had some half-built contraption that only he understood lying around on the ground. Wally protested, saying as how he was providing the science, he should help build it, but his best friend simply ignored him).

"Wait!" the redhead suddenly shouted. He dropped the heavy science book he had been perusing as he sat up all of a sudden, catching Robin's attention from where the preteen was continuing to put together whatever electronic doohickey he was creating. "I've got it! Duh! Why didn't I think of it before?"

"Think of wha—oh. Oh! Yes! That's brilliant!" Dick exclaimed, dropping what he was working on as well. "Why _didn't_ we think of it before?"

And the grin they exchanged would have terrified even Hal Jordan.

Unfortunately, while Iris had been standing outside the tent at the moment of those exclamations to ask Wally what he wanted for dinner (he was staying with his Aunt and Uncle while his parents were out of town), she had not been inside to see the grins that she alone knew promised worldwide destruction. As such, she did not have the foresight to stop them on their dastardly path, and simply turned away with the decision to make a casserole (or five, rather, because Wally and Barry could easily pack away two each, and after she got her food, finish the other one between them. No one said being a speedster was cheap), wondering the whole way if her nephew and his best friend had suddenly developed telepathy between the two of them.

And that was how the Justice League ended up crossing dimensions when they stepped into the Zeta Beam tubes to get to the Watchtower.

And that was also how Robin and Wally got grounded from each other for the next few months, once the League managed to get back from fighting off evil tentacle monsters that had taken over that dimension (and that was an incident filed under "Things never spoken of. EVER."), with their time travel plans put on hold until after the fateful incident on July 4th. After that, they were, of course, too busy with the team and learning to work together and get along with new team members and school and Wally's fifth year straight of winning the science fair and Dick leading his team of mathletes to victory once more to do much more than think about their time machine plans, but never when they had a free moment to start the project again. It wasn't until one day in the shower that Wally suddenly had a burst of inspiration.

It had been a night of thieves, villains, and goo monsters with Roy, and by the time the two of them got back to Barry's house, they wanted nothing more than to clean themselves of the gunk they were covered in. Barry and Iris were out on their Thursday evening date night, and Wally used the opportunity to get some quality time in with his boyfriend by jumping into the shower with the older redhead.

"We probably shouldn't be doing this in your uncle's shower," the older redhead stated when the two separated for air.

"I know," Wally replied before diving in for more tongue action. A few more seconds, and then Roy pushed him away again, not so subtly admiring the speedster's soaked, naked body.

"No, really, Flash will _kill_ me if he catches me 'deflowering' his favourite nephew in _his_ bathroom."

"First: I'm his _only_ nephew, and second: I _know_. Which is why we shouldn't be _wasting any time_." Roy barely had time to give a mental shrug before Wally was taking the initiative again, ignoring everything the archer was muttering whenever they broke for air. At least until, in the middle of Roy giving him a hickey that wouldn't last, something the older redhead had said suddenly hit him.

"_This shower's so much bigger than it seems from the outside_," he had said.

It was _bigger_. On the _inside_. It was _bigger on the inside_.

"That's it!" the speedster exclaimed, shoving his startled boyfriend away from him. Roy could only blink in confusion as Wally disappeared from the shower, only reappearing moments later, fully dressed, to peak his head in and say, "Oh, you might want to get dressed. Rob's coming over."

There were some things that Roy Harper was perfectly content not knowing, but he had the feeling that whatever he had just inspired was about to leave him no choice but to participate.

"You guys are still at this?" was the first thing out of Roy's mouth the instant he realized what Dick and Wally were up to. If it came out a little annoyed, well, he was the one who had just been ditched in the middle of a very heated…_conversation_. As it was, he was now sitting back against and watching two crazed genius children continue their not very successful work dismantling the shower.

"Uh, yeah, we're still at this. I mean, dude. It's a time machine," Rob retorted without looking up from where he was working with a wrench doing…something. Roy did not ask and did not want to know.

"I thought you got banned from trying to build one after the Justice League ended up fighting those tentacle monsters."

"Not banned. More like put on hold," Wally interjected. The younger redhead was moving around a lot in the small space, and with his speed looked like he was jumping from place to place. He was somehow manging to continue his talk at a normal pace, though, for which Roy was forever grateful. "But everyone knows the main component of any good TARDIS is that it has to be bigger on the inside. That was our main problem, but once we figured out how to cause dimensional rifts—and that was a total accident, we only messed with one zeta tube, there was no reason for it to affect all of them—it was just a matter of figuring out how to make our own little pocket dimension that we could fold into a convenient space, but now we need a convenient space, and we were in the shower, and you said that thing about bigger than it seems, and I thought 'bigger on the inside!' because, you know, _TARDIS_, and all. The main part that we just can't figure out is the actual time travel part because I can totally do it running but its completely subconscious, like, I don't know how to replicate that when I'm not running, and there's no machine powerful enough to make anything move as fast as we'd need it to that we could use, or at least we haven't figured out what we need yet. As long as we get that, we can get this time machine together no problem! Personally, I'd rather use a police box but seeing as Uncle B kind of banned me from the entire continent of Europe unless it's an emergency, well…"

Roy blinked. He had no idea what Wally had just said to him. "I have no idea what you just said to me."

"We wanted to use a police box but Flash won't let Wally near Europe, and the only thing we have to figure out to actually make this work is time travel," Robin clarified. He still didn't look up from what he was doing. "Also, we built our own pocket dimension."

"…Right. Well. I think I'm going to go now, it's been fun." Roy stood up and stretched, but when he shoved the bathroom door open he yelled and jumped back as he came face to face with Barry.

"Hey, Wally, we're ba—What the heck happened to my shower?!" the Flash practically screeched, his blue eyes bulging as his hands grabbed at short tufts of blonde hair. "Wally! Dick! What are you doing to my shower?! Roy?"

"Don't ask me; they just kind of…started! Besides, I was just leaving, anyway."

Barry frowned. "No, I mean 'Roy?' as in 'What are you doing in my house with my nephew when I'm not supposed to be home, I thought you lived in Star City which is three states away, _Roy_?'"

"Well, I, uh—" Roy began, but the blonde hero suddenly glanced away as something about his nephew caught his attention.

"Is that—Wally, why do you have a hicky." It was not a question, and Wally definitely froze what he was doing to shoot his uncle a slightly bashful grin. Roy died a little on the inside. It took a lot to make the Flash angry, but when those blue eyes narrowed on his, the archer knew it was all over for him.

"We need to have a talk," Barry Allen declared evenly, and grabbed Roy's arm to drag him downstairs as Roy prayed for the end. He almost—_almost_—didn't notice the way Wally and Dick high fived each other as they were left to their evil genius-y ministrations.

Wally was so going to pay for this.

**xxx**

Like all their greatest ideas so far, Wally and Dick's great breakthrough came during their movie night. The thought flashed through both their heads simultaneously and they turned to stare at each other, eyes wide and mouths gaping.

"Dude," Rob began.

"_Dude_," Wally replied.

"_Flux capacitor_," they said simultaneously.

And, thus, the infamous Batmobile trial came about.

**xxx**

It started a day much like any other. Wally's parents grew tired of his antics, so they sent him off to his uncle's house. Barry and Iris were in desperate need of some alone time, so they sent him off to the cave. The cave was empty of everyone save Connor and M'gann sitting in a corner making kissy faces at each other, so he sent himself off to Gotham. Bruce Wayne was currently out attending a charity function, so there was no one to run interference when Wally showed up in Dick's room, grinning even more insanely than usual.

Well, there was Alfred, but Bruce swore that his butler secretly enjoyed tormenting him and thus refused to do anything about the two boys.

"You got it?" Wally asked as soon as he slid to a stop in Dick's room. Rob, without missing a beat, dropped the textbook he was using, reached under his bed, and pulled out what an unsuspecting bystander might believe to be part of an engine—but, really, it was _so much more than that_.

"Oh, I got it," the fourteen-year-old replied, grinning back.

"Sweet!" Wally exclaimed. "Where are we gonna try it?"

Dick's grin grew. In the back of his mind, Wally could almost hear the faintest tinges of a very creepy laugh.

One hour later, their work completed, the two of them emerged from the Batcave, laughing hysterically.

Luckily enough, Alfred was extremely perceptive and noticed them when they came out, knowing full well what they were up to. Unluckily enough, he felt it would be much more amusing not to warn Bruce about anything the boys may or may not have done to the Batmobile (by this point, he was just as curious as the two of them to see if they would really build themselves a time machine), and as such, simply saw Wally off with three dozen cookies of various flavors, and a myriad of other sweet treats.

**xxx**

Batman rued the day Barry Allen had first introduced his nephew to Doctor Who. Really, though, he should have seen this coming. It had seemed perfectly harmless to him, Wally and Dick's time-consuming efforts to replicate a TARDIS, even with Barry's worry and the one time the two of them had caused all the zeta bean transporters to malfunction. Merely a case of boys being boys—with the boys in question being geniuses, as the case may be.

Now, though, sitting in the Batmobile ten seconds before he actually got into the vehicle, and watching himself get in across the cave, Batman decided one thing:

Immediate intervention was in order.

**xxx**

That night, Robin called Wally: "It worked."

**TBC…**


End file.
